Identity and Politics in Provincial Russia: Tver, 1889–1905

Abstract

In recent times, where identity has been associated with ‘a mode of being’ and ‘claims to a capacity for action or change’, the distinction between what exists and what might provide legitimacy to action is clearly crucial to the point at issue.¹ This is especially so in the case of ‘regional identity’ in Russia; for it has been the dissociation of ‘claims to a capacity for action or change’ here from the connotations of the region in terms of historical and social attributes (except in the Ukraine, Siberia and the Lower Volga), that has left the identity of the locality unattended except as a focus of kraevedenie, that is, the study of an area for its own sake. Otherwise, regional and national identity in Russia has been dealt with in standard terms: that is ‘construction’ (intellectual and social)² and with regard to religion ethnicity, sensibility and political economy. In such cases, identity is linked directly to territorial and political claims, and a clear interconnection is apparent in the very rhetoric which accompanies ‘claims’.